Northern Light Health receives second HIMSS Davies Award

Maine is one of the most rural states in the nation, and its population is the oldest based on median age. These realities created challenges for Northern Light Health as it delivered on its mission to provide quality care, close to home, to roughly two-thirds of Maine geographically. Formed in 1982 as Maine’s only integrated health care system, it now encompasses 10 hospitals and more than 100 healthcare facilities.

The 2023 Davies Award, HIMSS’s highest global recognition of hospitals and ambulatory practices, is awarded to innovative healthcare organizations that deliver refined and evidence-based best practices that other institutions may adopt to also improve their patient outcomes.

Oracle supports the healthcare system with an embedded team that spans multiple roles and is guided by executive sponsorship. This team helps Northern Light Health develop and prioritize a solution roadmap across Oracle Health EHR and Digital Experience programs, maximizing the ROI of its Oracle investments. Reciprocally, Northern Light Health has been a key contributor to the development of Oracle Health solutions. Its clinicians have been participants in many alpha and beta initiatives. Most recently, they provided feedback to the Oracle Health Advance team on clinician reporting and process analytics, leading to enhancements to that platform.

Northern Light Health was recognized in part for reducing COVID-related hospital admissions, lowering the rate of readmissions for its cardiovascular patients, and decreasing medication errors. Northern Light Health has long used Oracle Health products and tools to achieve breakthrough results for its patients. Oracle Health assisted in the gathering and documenting of the metrics used within the following case studies.

 

Monoclonal Antibodies: A Reduction in Hospital Admissions in COVID-19 Therapy

This case study documents the efforts of Northern Light Health clinicians to prioritize the delivery of treatment to patients who were at high risk of severe complications if they were to contract COVID. “We developed a risk stratification tool within our Oracle Health EHR system that analyzed data gathered from patients who had tested positive,” says Jim Douglas, vice president and chief medical informatics officer at Northern Light Health. “This enabled us to assign a risk number to every patient in the system. The higher the number, the more at risk that patient was for severe complications.”

Subsequently, an Incident Command Center was formed to notify high-risk patients and deliver treatment to them close to home.

“We partnered with Oracle Health to develop a faster way to give the vaccines and increase throughput,” says Ben Isenhour, vice president of information systems and enterprise relationships and interoperability officer at Northern Light Health. “Based on our data-driven approach, the state allocated more treatments to us than any other health care organization in Maine.”

“Over 37 months, we gave 2,754 treatments that, according to the current research, led to 183 preventable hospitalizations and potential deaths,” says Douglas. 

 

Reducing Medication Errors by Revamping mCDS Alerting: The Goldilocks Principle

A second case study explains how Northern Light Health fine-tuned the algorithms that generate alerts from its EHR system. The alerts are used to warn care providers of potential negative medication interactions. “The system-generated alerts for medication interactions are ingrained in the workflows used by all our clinicians,” says Dr. Michael Ross, vice president and chief medical informatics officer and practicing pediatrician at Northern Light Health. “When they are constantly inundated with alerts, it can be distracting. Using the Goldilocks Principle as an analogy, our goal was to find the right balance of alerts—not too hot, not too cold, but just right—that would lead to an overall reduction in the number of medication errors.”

An interdisciplinary team, including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, worked together, using Oracle Health and other technologies. As a result, the number of medication errors were reduced from an average of 7 to 2 per 100 orders.

“One of the things that makes our organization different is our emphasis on adoption during the design and planning phases of a project,” says Emily Burdin, vice president of digital transformation and performance at Northern Light Health. “We’ve partnered with Oracle Health to enhance the EHR system and related tools so that when we roll out a new technology or optimized workflow, we can measure how well our care teams are adopting it, which helps us quantify the true value the technology brings to our organization and to our patients.”

 

Comprehensive and Standardized Cardiovascular Care Leads to Decreased Readmissions

A third case study focuses on how Northern Light Health developed a readmission risk predictor that is now used to identify cardiovascular patients who are at high risk for readmission. “Using this tool, our care teams moved from a standard care delivery model to a very disease-specific model tailored to our cardiovascular patients,” Fogel says. “A key component to the success of this model was the establishment of embedded care managers who provide touch points within the cardiovascular service line in addition to the acute care clinicians assigned to each patient.”

The readmission risk predictor features a dashboard within the Oracle EHR system that enables care managers to filter the entire population of patients who have documented readmission risks based on location, encounter type, and/or medical service risk.

Improvement in the use of PowerPlans within Oracle Health EHR was also recognized as a key component to the success of the care delivery model. This care planning tool enables providers to manage orders, outcomes, and interventions as they relate to an individualized patient-specific, problem-driven plan of care.

In the 18-month period highlighted in the case study, Northern Light Health decreased overall cardiac-related readmissions from 9.8% to 9.1% and decreased heart failure (HF) readmissions from 17% to 14.5%.

 

The best is yet to come

Northern Light Health continues to work closely with its Oracle to sustain this mutually beneficial relationship.

“Even though every health care organization believes it is different and unique, the things we’ve accomplished working with Oracle Health are replicable for most every

organization,” Burdin says. “A lot of it is just people, process, technology, and supporting each of those with change management methodologies. It’s about making a commitment to align with the best practices that have been established in this partnership to support our clinicians and show value.”

“Congratulations to Northern Light Health on receiving their second HIMSS Davies,” says Bob Kopanic, senior vice president, North America, Oracle Health. “This very well-deserved recognition spotlights NLH’s outstanding work toward its mission to build a better approach to healthcare, rooted in the belief people deserve access to care that works for them. We’re proud to partner with NLH in serving both rural and urban populations in Maine, using Oracle Health’s technology to raise the bar on healthcare and implement solutions to ultimately lead to improved healthcare.”